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[sev]

following on from my 'To raid or not to raid' thread some weeks ago,

I come to my next dilemma!

As some of you know i'm looking to put together a nice new desktop workstation for digital design and animation, cad and all things 3d type stuff.

After some wonderful advice and links, and a big huge help from the I.T. guys guys at work, who had a box of drives and junk they were going to throw as they've just forked out for some bigger capacity units, I chucked some money in the beer fund and troddled off.

I'm in the posession of a three of seagate cheetah drives U320 80pin with converters to 68pin.  2x146GB and 1x32GB. all are 15,000 rpm

The U320 host bus card unfortunately is for PCI-X 133 bus, and an old U160 card I had knocking around is for a PCI x8 bus.

Now, This means that i've got to look at a controller card that'll fit a desktop configuration, as all the PCI-X 64bit slots are found on server boards and high end Tyan and Supermicro dual Xeon Workstation boards, and I just don't have 380 quid just for a board before i've even begun to think about cpu or the fearsomely expensive ECC ram.

The only workable SCSI HBA I can find is made by adaptec, and sits in a PCI-Ex1 slot.  The cheapest I can find it for is £150.
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/scsi/entry/ASC-29320LPE/

Now I have an adaptec SATA PCI-E HBA with two outputs  already - as I really don't and never have trusted onboard raid controllers.
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/entry/AAR-1220SA/

So that 150 quid could go towards buying a SATA3 10x velociraptor drive as a boot drive and the 500gb drive I already have as a general storage drive.

So here's my dilemma.

I figure that they both make a heck of a lot of noise, and so would I be better off with the V.raptor as boot and a regular 7200 as a storage drive

or,  buy the scsi card and use the 15x cheetahs and then have a sata storage.

The applications do a lot of math functions and in the case of the rendering apps and  visuals use scratch discs quite extensively.

If I had an onboard 64bit PCI-X bus, I wouldn't hesitate but now I just need some advice to help me get my head around the best solution.

From what i've managed to dredge up so far, there seems such little difference in them.  

[cem_devecioglu]

following on from my 'To raid or not to raid' thread some weeks ago,

I come to my next dilemma!

As some of you know i'm looking to put together a nice new desktop workstation for digital design and animation, cad and all things 3d type stuff.

After some wonderful advice and links, and a big huge help from the I.T. guys guys at work, who had a box of drives and junk they were going to throw as they've just forked out for some bigger capacity units, I chucked some money in the beer fund and troddled off.

I'm in the posession of a three of seagate cheetah drives U320 80pin with converters to 68pin.  2x146GB and 1x32GB. all are 15,000 rpm

The U320 host bus card unfortunately is for PCI-X 133 bus, and an old U160 card I had knocking around is for a PCI x8 bus.

Now, This means that i've got to look at a controller card that'll fit a desktop configuration, as all the PCI-X 64bit slots are found on server boards and high end Tyan and Supermicro dual Xeon Workstation boards, and I just don't have 380 quid just for a board before i've even begun to think about cpu or the fearsomely expensive ECC ram.

The only workable SCSI HBA I can find is made by adaptec, and sits in a PCI-Ex1 slot.  The cheapest I can find it for is £150.
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/scsi/entry/ASC-29320LPE/

Now I have an adaptec SATA PCI-E HBA with two outputs  already - as I really don't and never have trusted onboard raid controllers.
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/entry/AAR-1220SA/

So that 150 quid could go towards buying a SATA3 10x velociraptor drive as a boot drive and the 500gb drive I already have as a general storage drive.

So here's my dilemma.

I figure that they both make a heck of a lot of noise, and so would I be better off with the V.raptor as boot and a regular 7200 as a storage drive

or,  buy the scsi card and use the 15x cheetahs and then have a sata storage.

The applications do a lot of math functions and in the case of the rendering apps and  visuals use scratch discs quite extensively.

If I had an onboard 64bit PCI-X bus, I wouldn't hesitate but now I just need some advice to help me get my head around the best solution.

From what i've managed to dredge up so far, there seems such little difference in them.  

yep.. all  10K and over disks are very noisy , newer SAS models  not that much though..

my idea : if you can afford go for the 15K SCSI route, its faster and worth it..

some idiots in my department buy newer workstations with Sata disks  (7200 RPM) and they are slower than the previous buy (15K SCSI) although they have a better cpu.. and now everyone complaining..

[cem_devecioglu]

and it will be a good practice to cool down 15K disks ..

solution : some extra fan with sockets and hot silicon will do the job..

[TheBoy]

IDE/SATA will always be slower than SCSI/SAS from similar era.

There is a good reason the HBAs are PCI-X or at least PCIe x 4 (usually x8) - it needs the bandwidth!  The standard crappy PCI implementation on every single desktop board is, lets face it, 15yrs old.

Most desktop style mobos only offer PCEe x1 (ignoring the vga slot), which is fine for Gb NICs (its original design goal), but you'll need x4 for budget disk controllers, and x8 for midrange/high end ones.  Most workstation boards have the necessary PCIe configs (and often PCI-X as well).

So with the stuff you have, there will always be a compromise.  Based on that, I'd use the Adapter 29160 pci card you have, and the fast scsi drives.  Remember, the key to performance is C: and pagefile on the fastest stuff you have for Windows workstation use.

On a desktop mobo, no point adding extra scsi cards to spread the load, as they only have 1 PCI bus.

Hope that helps

[cem_devecioglu]

IDE/SATA will always be slower than SCSI/SAS from similar era.

There is a good reason the HBAs are PCI-X or at least PCIe x 4 (usually x8) - it needs the bandwidth!  The standard crappy PCI implementation on every single desktop board is, lets face it, 15yrs old.

Most desktop style mobos only offer PCEe x1 (ignoring the vga slot), which is fine for Gb NICs (its original design goal), but you'll need x4 for budget disk controllers, and x8 for midrange/high end ones.  Most workstation boards have the necessary PCIe configs (and often PCI-X as well).

So with the stuff you have, there will always be a compromise.  Based on that, I'd use the Adapter 29160 pci card you have, and the fast scsi drives.  Remember, the key to performance is C: and pagefile on the fastest stuff you have for Windows workstation use.

On a desktop mobo, no point adding extra scsi cards to spread the load, as they only have 1 PCI bus.

Hope that helps

yep..C drive and pagefile  are very critical for performance..

tried some ide (boot)+scsi mixture systems in the past.. serious performance loss..

also I must remind that if you use 1 or 2 15K scsi disk you will not need a bandwidth whats necessary for a raid.. but will have still adequate performance (mostly)..

[sev]

CEM/TB, you've been both great helps.

CEM, don't worry i've got some HDD cooler heatspreader cages and the fans ready! The new chassis is also one big mesh grille!  

The Boy, CEM, what exactly is the page file?
Also I agree with you, and i've seen a PCIe x8 SAS controller which I know will sit in the x16 slot confortably. My only concern is that it won't run the SATA dvd burners I have. The only other option I have is to look at a PCIe x1 scsi card but that's the wrong side of £300, as all of the other SCSI solutions are really for the PCI-X 133 bus.

After looking into it, I'm very tempted to just get a pair of fast 10K sata's and save the money till the new generation workstation boards come of age.  I was looking at Supermicro's upcoming i7 offerings (up to 24GB of DDR3 over 6 slots!),  I'm very tempted to sell all my old tosh, and put the cash by for the monster build that I always intended to do at the end of the year.

Unfortunately the 29160 won't sit in the PCI slot on my board it requires a 64/32 bit slot, so we're back to the PCIe x1 controller, and if i'm going to compromise, i'd rather just wait it out till I can get a board that will cope with the demands I need to place on it rather than bodging a workaround compromise solution.

I'm thinking if I look to keep an eye on the SAS/SATA controllers then hopefully when I'm in the position I can just look to get 15K sas drives, especially as the supermicro boards are starting to have them on as onboard options which would keep the cost down initially!

[TheBoy]

CEM/TB, you've been both great helps.

CEM, don't worry i've got some HDD cooler heatspreader cages and the fans ready! The new chassis is also one big mesh grille!  

The Boy, CEM, what exactly is the page file?
Also I agree with you, and i've seen a PCIe x8 SAS controller which I know will sit in the x16 slot confortably. My only concern is that it won't run the SATA dvd burners I have. The only other option I have is to look at a PCIe x1 scsi card but that's the wrong side of £300, as all of the other SCSI solutions are really for the PCI-X 133 bus.

After looking into it, I'm very tempted to just get a pair of fast 10K sata's and save the money till the new generation workstation boards come of age.  I was looking at Supermicro's upcoming i7 offerings (up to 24GB of DDR3 over 6 slots!),  I'm very tempted to sell all my old tosh, and put the cash by for the monster build that I always intended to do at the end of the year.

Unfortunately the 29160 won't sit in the PCI slot on my board it requires a 64/32 bit slot, so we're back to the PCIe x1 controller, and if i'm going to compromise, i'd rather just wait it out till I can get a board that will cope with the demands I need to place on it rather than bodging a workaround compromise solution.

I'm thinking if I look to keep an eye on the SAS/SATA controllers then hopefully when I'm in the position I can just look to get 15K sas drives, especially as the supermicro boards are starting to have them on as onboard options which would keep the cost down initially!

pagefile is the virtual memory file, bit like swap under *nix. As its saved to disk, disk performance is key to this file.

DVD drives - put them on the motherboard SATA connectors, leave the disk controller doing disk.

Most SAS controllers can also use SATA disks (with the associated performance hit), though be aware that many can't mix SAS and SATA on the same array.

Didn't realise the 29160 was 64bit - pretty certain that the scsi card i use for tape drive in the oof server, though it was 32bit/33mhz. Sorry for duff info.  Obviously you know you can use 64bit pci in 32bit slot, as long as connector doesn't foul anything? Agian, with performance hit. Though if you have all the parts, always worth a go